breathe. share 'A Way Out Of Here', a documentary on their fundraising trip to wartime Ukraine

Gadigal Land/Sydney duo breathe. have released ‘A Way Out Of Here’, a documentary following their July trip to Ukraine. The night before their festival set, Kyiv was hit by one of the largest ballistic missile attacks since the full-scale Russian invasion, and the next afternoon an air raid cleared the site just minutes before they were due on stage.

The film, which runs just under 30 minutes, documents a trip that raised $100,000 for Ukrainian causes.

The band’s trip to Ukraine reflects that demand, with Ukrainian listeners making up around 30% of their YouTube audience. For years, the band says, fans have sent photos and stories, increasingly from bomb shelters, the front line, and people grieving their family and friends.

Sean Walker and Andrew Grant, who make up breathe., had intended to play no shows in 2026 and to prioritise the release of their next record. Ukraine quickly became the exception, with appearances booked at !FESTrepublic in Lviv and at Atlas Festival, Ukraine’s largest music festival. Atlas is held at Kyiv’s Blockbuster Mall, chosen largely because it doubles as the country’s largest bomb shelter.

The documentary follows Walker and Grant, alongside collaborator Dylan Wright, as they share what it feels like to tour in a country at war. We see interviews with locals sharing their excitement amid the dread they experience daily, the fear the band feels as they wait in a bomb shelter, and the teary eyes of patrons as the band finally performs. It’s an emotional, turbulent journey that has already received over a hundred thousand views on the band’s YouTube channel at the time of writing.

At the documentary’s close, Sean Walker reflects on their experience, sharing:

“We go home, we go home to safe old Australia, and they’re left here with this. It’s so fuckin’ unfair. All the Ukrainians that I’ve spoken to, the thing they’ve said is that ‘we have no choice. We just have to deal with it… We’ve just got to get on with life. We just have to.’

I’ve really fallen in love with them, and to see this destruction is just fucking heartbreaking.”

Around 7,500 people attended the two shows, with $100,000 raised, split three ways: auction proceeds funding a Ukrainian music school through Music Saves Ukraine, donations to Okhmatdyt, Kyiv's main children's cancer hospital and defensive equipment for a Ukrainian military brigade through Come Back Alive's Dronefall project, aimed at protecting civilians from drone attacks.

The band are clear that ‘A Way Out Of Here’ isn’t meant to be a standard tour documentary. Dave May ACS, whose cinematography on ‘Love On The Spectrum’ earned him an Emmy nomination, worked with breathe. on a film that spends less time on the devastation of war and more on the everyday lives, culture and resilience of Ukrainians. It also explores what music can do to bring people together, even as much of the world’s attention has moved elsewhere.

Watch ‘A Way Out Of Here’ below: